matchcraftCALL BASED OPTIMIZATION:GENERATING MORE “GOOD” CALLS
April 20, 2015
Local Search Association
Alex Dionysian, CTO
MatchCraft is a global provider of local search, display,
and social marketing solutions that enable traditional
media companies and digital agencies to efficiently
provision quality local marketing solutions for SMB
advertisers.
Founded in 1998, we operate in more than 26 countries
and our AdVantage platform supports over 16 languages
and dialects.
We have offices in Santa Monica, California; Leiden,
Netherlands; Berlin, Germany; Sao Paolo, Brazil; and
Mumbai, India.
We have 80+ employees worldwide.
ABOUT MATCHCRAFT
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THE CALL TRACKING Challenge
- Which calls are good?
- How do we get more of them?
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CALL QUALITY - METHODOLOGY
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• Listen to actual recorded calls
• 340 calls across 3 verticals
• Usually able to categorize within 60 seconds
• 4 possible call types
• Sale/Info call o relevant to SEM objective
• Irrelevant o repeat of previous call, sale to merchant, etc.
• Answering Mach. / Blank o unable to determine call quality.
• Wrong Number
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HOW MANY “GOOD” CALLS?
Type of Call HVAC Airport Parking Limo Service
Sales/Info 62 44 35
Irrelevant 26 61 20
Ans. Mach. / Blank 26 6 9
Wrong Number 15 32 2
(Sale/Info) / Total 48% 31% 54%
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Irrelevant call: Cancel reservation, continuation of previous call, personal call
Wrong number: Sometimes put on hold and then discover their error, call for flight information,
Language issues
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CALL DURATION: THE MAGIC BULLET…(NOT)
07
Den
sity
Call Duration (seconds)
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CALLS OVER 30 SECONDS
09
Percent of calls over 30 seconds which are good:
• HVAC - 56% gain of 8%
• Parking - 40% gain of 9%
• Limo - 64% gain of 10%
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Contributing Reasons
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• Good calls can be short
• Nature of business – e.g. limos & taxis can have fast conclusions
• Voicemail & being put on hold
• Takes a while to realize this is not the merchant you
wanted
• “Please leave a message”
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VARIATION AMOUNG VERTICALS
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Den
sity
Call Duration (seconds)
Den
sity
Call Duration (seconds)
Chart #1: HVAC Chart #2: Parking
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CONCLUSIONS
09
1. There’s no magic number when it comes to call duration.
2. Much overlap in duration between good and bad calls
3. Good calls can be short and bad calls can be long
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CALL ASSOCIATION
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Which click led to which call?
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COMMON METHODOLOGY
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• Time stamping
• Potentially in combination with number rotation
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30 min. window
CALL ASSOCIATION – WHICH CLICK IS IT?
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30 min. window
Calls
0 Clicks 2 Clicks
Timeframe
Clicks
It can (mostly) work…
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% OF GOOD CALLS THAT DID NOT HAVE
A PRECEDING CLICK
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• What percent of calls have no click in the 30 prior minutes?
• 22% for the Limo Service merchant
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% OF GOOD CALLS THAT DID NOT HAVE A PRECEDING
CLICK
8%
1%
22%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
HVAC Parking Limo Service
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Go
od
ca
lls w
ith
ou
t a
pre
ce
din
g c
lick
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CONCLUSIONS
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• Big variation across the three merchants we looked at
• High click rate = higher chance of accidental association
• Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) with number rotation can help
• 30 minutes may not be long enough
• More complicate algorithms may extract more signal
• DNI with larger pool can help
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LOOKING INTO A THICK FOG
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Call quality
– Eliminate repeat calls
– Acknowledge bad/irrelevant calls – take them into account
Call to click association ambiguity
– Spread the credit for the call potentially on more than one click
Addressing low spend/click/call volume
– Look for like merchants
STATISTICAL OPTIMIZATION METHODS
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HOW DO WE DEAL WITH NOISY DATA?
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Aggregate data in different dimensions to
squeeze the signal out of the data
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Q&A
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THANK
YOU!Contact Information:
Alex Dionysian
CTO, MatchCraft LLC
(310) 314-3320
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